One man's struggle in fantasy football. An illustrated journal.

About

Having picked up Football Manager 2010 and made the decision to waste precious hours, days and weeks which could be more productively spent than shouting at a computer screen because the little dots (yes, dots. As much as I love the 3D animation, my graphics card doesn’t so back to the old 2D view for me) aren’t moving where I told them to, I thought it only appropriate to spend more time telling the internet of these entirely inconsequential exploits. Also, I had a spare blog crying out for some content.

Now, I’m not the most regular of Football Manager players but I have picked up the game intermittantly for the last 10 years; the last version I had being 2005, so anybody expecting tips and tricks are out of luck – this is simply an account of one Leeds United fan’s stuttering journey from League 1. I will be posting the tactics I use, the decision making process I go through and profiles of some of our players, primarily for posterity but they may come in useful to somebody – if only as a warning of what not to do.

During said journey, I will be adhering to the following:

No cheats, loopholes or exploits.
This means I aren’t going to be save-reloading, using the editor, adding extra managers as “helpers” or (intentionally) exploiting holes in the match-day engine.

This is a career game.
As much of a Leeds fan as I am, this is not purely about Leeds – that’s just the logical starting point. Naturally, I want to take Leeds to the top of the game but if I get sacked, I’ll be down to the job centre looking for new opportunities. This ties in with the previous point – I aren’t going to just start another profile and take control of the club again.
It works the other way, too – if I (heaven forbid) get a better offer, or just get bored of Leeds, I’ll move clubs and see where that takes me.

Posting schedule
I have a habit of getting into a game and realising I’ve lost an entire day / night / week and am suddenly 3 seasons further along which, usually, would be fine. If, as I intend, I am going to document this thing, I want to be posting about things while they are still fresh. To this end, I’ll be posting regularly with updates, match reports etc and ad hoc when interesting things happen. This may slow the playing down but it also forces me to think more on decisions and prevents me writing with benefit of hind-sight, so all is good.

In the interests of full disclosure, I would to make it known that I am both aware and a fan of the True Football Manager blog and I did get inspiration to start this because of it.